I was out on my 5.2 last weekend, sustained winds over 20 knots. Water was a little choppy, but not bad. We were smoking upwind when I heard a unusual sound. It turns out the port hull had cracked It was pointed in about 4 inches.

We prepared for the inevitable, and the port hull slowly sank. We were in no danger, and we prepared for the long drift into shore. A couple of boaters eventually stopped by to check on us. A boat of drunken rednecks eventually offered us a tow. However, he insisted on towing much too fast, and ripped the port hull completely off and damaged the starboard hull.

I'm not really sure how this happened. I painted her this summer and inspected all stringers and bulkheads. I've had her out in similar conditions many times.

The rig, sails, tramp are all in good condition. If anyone knows where I can find a good set of hulls, please let me know.







Edited by bfoxg8r1 on Sep 02, 2011 - 08:56 AM.

Yikes. Scarry.
Glad you made it back unharmed.

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Gray Amick
Chapin, SC
'77 NACRA 5.2
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Where are you located?

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Rob
OKC
Pile of Nacra parts..
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Located in Orlando.

what a drag...the hulls look great too. you should be able to find a donor boat reasonable being that the sails, tramp, rigging, etc. don,t matter. who knows, you might get wound up and decide you can fix those!...then you know exactly what kind of shape theyre in...good luck either way

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Check out "Prindle Sailors" on Facebook!
bill harris
hattiesburg, mississippi
prindle 16- "BLUE RIBBON"
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What do you think happened? Do you think the hull had a weak spot? I am looking at going out this Monday on a large local lake. Forecast is for 15-20 mph winds with gusts up to 35. That much gust concerns me some.

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David
Memphis, TN
'84 Hobie 18
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this happened a few years ago to a guy on catsailor called airborne after he'd spent a lot of time and $ fixing a ratty old 5.2 into something that looked like new, very disheartening...

importantly it happened with 2 big guys double trapped in high winds, ie huge loads from the mast pulling the submerged bow inwards and huge loads from the water pushing it in too

i think what happened is that over the years the hull stringers forward of the beam have partially delaminated from the hull and the high loads have popped them off making the thin hull glass take all the load

on the thin walled solid glass cats the stringers MUST remained bonded to the hull walls for there to be the required strength

after airborne's virtually identical inward bow collapse some 5.2 owners chiselled off their forward decks, where there is no inspection hatch, and found some stringers floating free of the hull wall...

the problem could be that using 70's built techniques nacra formed the stringers of chopped-strand glass over cardboard half-tubes...chopped strand just isn't strong enough for equiv. weight with woven cloth and cardboard tubes tend to absorb half the resin so the bond gets starved of resin. nowadays you'd want to use plastic...........i guess this is part of the reason nacra moved to sandwich foam construction in 1984/85 and started using bridal-foils, to transfer some of the loads to the other hull, on nacras with longer bows like the 5.5, 5.8 and 6.0

2 things old 5.2 owners can do to prevent it happening to them

1/ chisel off the forward decks, epoxy some biaxial weave tape from stringers to hull wall and also add a couple of foam bulkheads between forward beam and bridal tang

or

2/ avoid double trapping in high winds, spill air before then and raise the daggers to at least half when reaching when winds are high



Edited by erice on Sep 04, 2011 - 04:59 AM.

Wow, the previous owner of my boat actually cut a big hole through one of the forward bulkheads (probably to repair a beam bolt)! I forgot about it until recently when I was inspecting inside my hulls. I didn't think much about it originally because I didn't know any better then forgot about it. I haven't had an issue, but my lake is so small the winds I see are usually pretty light. Now that I have added wing seats the extra stress could really start things cracking.

I was planning on fixing it next spring, now I think I am going to take your advice. It's getting close to the end of the season anyway so I'm going to shut er down, get the decks off and fiberglass the hell out of both front bulkheads. It's too darn hard to get a boat up here to take a chance!

Thanks for the info and sorry for your loss Bfox.

Regards,
Dave

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Dave Bonin
1981 Nacra 5.2 "Lucile"
1986 Nacra 5.7 "Belle"
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
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